THE HAITI EXPERIMENT THE HAITI EXPERIMENT

Transcription

Excerpts from
THE HAITI EXPERIMENT
that tell the story of the
Smallholder Farmers Alliance.
This excerpted version is free of charge.
To purchase the complete book go to
www.TheHaitiExperiment.com.
THE
HAITI
EXPERIMENT
HUGH LOCKE
Amid the
of a
This version ofwreckage
The Haiti Experiment
contains
country once rich
only excerpts from the complete book. These
beyond measure,
excerpts include
the Prologue,
a chance
to Introduction
and Chapter 4: rebuild.
Green Glory. The latter tells
the story of working with small-scale farmers in
Haiti to plant trees and improve agriculture.
HAWKEYE PUBLISHERS
H AW K E YNew
E PYork
UBLISHERS
2012
Ne w Yo r k
2012
Copyright © 2012 by Hugh Locke
All rights reserved.
Book website: www.TheHaitiExperiment.com
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheHaitiExperiment
ISBN-10: 0988216302
ISBN-13: 978-0-9882163-0-3
Hawkeye Publishers
New York, New York
Published September, 2012
Cover design and illustration by A. F. Cortés.
Back cover photo by William Charles Moss.
To forester, author and environmentalist
Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889–1982),
with warmest thanks for being my mentor in service
to humanity and my guide to a life well lived.
And to Wangari Maathai (1940–2011), founder
of the Green Belt Movement and winner of the
2004 Nobel Peace Prize, with deep gratitude for
your example, your message, and your friendship.
| vii
Shading indicates sections of the book NOT included in
this special excerpt.
Contents
Prologue
vii
Introduction
xi
1. A Short History of Haiti:
1
How it Went From Being One of the Richest
Countries in the World to One of the Poorest
2. Lending a Hand:
33
My Experience of Humanitarian Service in
Haiti from 2005 to 2009
3. Onwards From Armageddon:
93
Providing Emergency Services to Earthquake
and Cholera Victims
4. Green Glory:
133
Working With Small-scale Farmers to Plant
Trees and Improve Agriculture
5. Turning the Tables:
175
Haiti as a Model for the World
Bibliography
195
Acknowledgments
199
About the Author
201
| ix
Prologue
HAITI, 2005. Bright morning sunlight glinted harshly off the rolls
of barbed wire topping the barricades on either side of the road as we
entered the notorious slum of Cité Soleil, deep in the heart of Haiti’s
capital city of Port-au-Prince.
Suspicious, youthful eyes peered at us above bandana masks, the
wearers’ bravado pumped up by the guns they casually, but deliberately,
brandished. They had been instructed to let the four men in our red
car enter without shooting at us. Happily, all seemed to have got the
message. Inside the car with me were three of my Haitian employees,
who went by the names of Riro, Jimmy O, and Beaudy. We were all
nervous but quiet as we passed through the barricades and followed a
masked man on a motorcycle who was to guide us to our destination.
We were on our way to meet Amaral Duclona, the infamous gang
leader, known throughout the country by his first name—the most
wanted man in Haiti. His bloody reign of terror had kept the police
and UN peacekeepers out of Cité Soleil and rival gangs at bay. I was
meeting with him to negotiate terms for allowing Yéle Haiti—the
organization I had co-founded earlier that year with musicians Wyclef
Jean and Jerry Duplessis—to continue bringing in free rice for the local
residents who were suffering for lack of food.
We reached Amaral’s compound and were escorted into a courtyard. As we entered, about a dozen teenagers toting machine guns were
chatting or leaning against the courtyard walls. One of them informed
| TheHaiti
Haiti
Experiment
xviii| The
Experiment
us that Amaral would come out shortly. With dark clothes, sunglasses
and wool caps they were clearly intending to look tough, an image not
quite matching their youthful appearance.
My long training in protocol, honed over many years by contact
with various royal families and a considerable number of heads of state,
suppressed any fear that might reasonably have guided my actions.
Without thinking, I immediately went around the courtyard and
shook hands with each gang member, being sure to make eye contact
in the process. My Yéle colleagues chose not to follow my lead and
looked on in stunned silence. An interesting detail: holding a machine
gun requires both hands, something I quickly realized when each of
the gang members had to set down his gun in order to respond to my
gesture. A small but useful addition to my protocol experience.
Amaral emerged and greeted me and my colleagues. He was just
under six feet tall, rather pudgy, with very dark, pock-marked skin,
short hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. I have to admit that I was
intrigued to meet someone who was, by action and reputation, the
very incarnation of pure evil, who held sway over so many thousands
of people. Physically, he did not look the part, but when he began to
speak, he exuded both power and charisma.
The meeting with Amaral had been set up from New York by
Wyclef Jean, Yéle’s co-founder, and one of the few people at that time
with the moral authority to reach out to those on all sides of the
conflict that had paralyzed Haiti. I knew that Wyclef had spoken by
phone in advance with Amaral, but the latter was clearly surprised
when we met. It had been arranged that I would call Wyclef on my
cell phone. The connection went through and I handed the phone to
Amaral. I only learned later that Wyclef had neglected to tell Amaral
in advance that I was white. So his first thought on meeting me was
that I could not possibly be representing Wyclef, and might even
be part of a plot by the UN to capture him. Thankfully, Wyclef was
able to convince him that I was, indeed, his trusted representative. I
shudder to think what might have happened if cell phone reception
had been bad at that moment.
Prologue || xi
ix
Having established my credentials, I ended the phone conversation with Wyclef. From that moment on, it was just Amaral and
me, with Riro serving as interpreter. Beaudy and Jimmy O stayed
in the background and took no part in the negotiations. I acknowledged that Yéle was coming into Amaral’s territory to deliver free
food and expressed gratitude that he was allowing us safe passage.
I expressed the hope that this would continue, and then got to the
heart of the matter: negotiating the percentage of food that would be
given to Amaral to feed his and other gangs. Until that time, we had
no formal arrangement with the gangs for any percentage, but had
simply given them a few bags of rice from time to time. However,
several incidents had alerted us to the need for an understanding
in order to continue the operation. After some back and forth, we
finally agreed on 15 percent, and shook hands to seal the bargain.
This was within the terms I had previously agreed to with the World
Food Programme, which provided the rice. And it was considered by
all an acceptable cost to be able to continue distributing food in Cité
Soleil, since Yéle was the only organization able to get through the
barricades at that point.
I thought things were going well and that it was now time to take
up the second part of my mission: to explain our plan to have only
women receive the food that Yéle was to distribute. Amaral did not
take to this idea well at all. In fact, he shook his fist in the air and
began shouting, asking me why I would do something so stupid. Two
competing thoughts occurred to me at that moment: first, the man
has guns; and second, that he would probably respect me more if I
stuck to my principles. So I calmly explained that we felt women were
more responsible when it came to making sure their families got the
food, whereas men were often inclined to sell it. Having stated my
case, I then thought it wise to formulate an exit strategy. To this end,
I suggested we had probably reached the point where we could agree
to disagree on the role of women in food distribution, particularly as I
was not asking him to get involved directly in that activity. He smiled
and became cordial again.
x | |The
xii
TheHaiti
HaitiExperiment
Experiment
We said our goodbyes. I got back in the car with my silent colleagues and we headed out. It was only after we passed through the
barricades that I phoned my wife, April. I had not told her in advance
that I was going to Cité Soleil that day, for fear she would worry. But
now I was able to relay the news that the visit had been successful and
that I was alive and all in one piece.
| xiii
Introduction
USA, 2012. The deluge of media-generated images of Haitian people
in recent years seems to have coalesced to form a single impression,
rather like a Chuck Close photorealist portrait consisting of thousands
of smaller individual faces. We see a Haitian face distorted by fear, rage,
and suffering, and, on closer inspection, the thousands of individual
faces in the portrait portray similar emotions.
Although I have seen many such images over the course of seven
and a half years of humanitarian service in Haiti, they are vastly outnumbered by faces expressing fortitude, determination, and joy. My
experience there has yielded a very different portrait of Haiti and its
people, one that I am honored to be able to share.
My introduction to the country was through two musicians, Wyclef
Jean and Jerry Duplessis, with whom I worked to create a charitable
organization called Yéle Haiti.
When I began travelling there in late 2004, it was as if the entire
country of close to ten million people, living in an area slightly smaller
than Belgium, existed in a parallel universe in which poverty, corruption,
violence, and hopelessness were the norm. I could move in and out of
this universe as easily as a three-and-a-half-hour flight from New York
City. But while in Haiti, the most I could do was to help a few individuals and families beat the odds and improve their living conditions.
During that initial period, I was acutely conscious of a set of statistics that served as a kind of protective mantra. Taken together and
xii || The
xiv
The Haiti
Haiti Experiment
Experiment
repeated in sequence, it went something like this: Haiti is the poorest
and most densely populated country in the Western hemisphere.
Eighty percent of the population is below the poverty line, while
54 percent live in extreme poverty. Every year, Haiti ranks as one of
the worst failed states in the world. It is always near the top of the
annual list of the most corrupt countries. It is regularly identified as
having the second largest income gap between the very rich and the
very poor in the world. Unemployment is running at more than 50
percent. The list goes on.
But this statistical interpretation of Haiti is does not reflect the
people I met and worked with, who are diligent, resourceful, happy,
even optimistic. How could Haiti have become one of the most
damaged societies on earth? Why could they not organize themselves
as a nation to correct the situation? And how could billions of dollars
in foreign aid pour into the country every year and not result in significant and tangible improvement?
Haiti holds a kind of enchantment that is hard to explain, unless you
have experienced it yourself. I found myself drawn to the country by
a kind of ephemeral and beckoning presence from somewhere beyond
the statistics. I started to focus less on the sorrow and began a quest to
gain deeper insight into the soul of the country. I asked questions of
people from all walks of life everywhere I went. I also started researching the country’s history and customs.
What began for me as humanitarian service with Yéle took on a
wider dimension. I came to realize that Haiti is a textbook case for
understanding the nature and impact of development assistance as a
whole. In many ways, Haiti resembles other developing nations that
receive money from richer countries and benefit from the operations
of the financial institutions those rich countries fund, such as the
United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,
and the Inter-American Development Bank. But Haiti is the canary
in the mineshaft when it comes to the challenges faced by developing
countries, whether it is deforestation, colonial oppression, political
instability, corruption, hurricanes, earthquakes, or the dark side of
Introduction
Introduction || xiii
xv
development aid that started flowing from richer nations in the early
1960s. It seems that the impact is often disproportionally felt in this
beleaguered nation.
My goal in sharing what I learned about development is not to
engage in polemics, but rather to try and understand the process in sufficient depth to be able to suggest ways in which it might be improved,
not only for the benefit of Haiti.
The bottom line in development aid is that when a rich country
gives money to a poor one, there are always strings attached. There is no
such thing as pure altruism when it comes to development assistance.
This is not unreasonable, depending upon the nature of the strings.
Even when dealing with humanitarian aid in response to natural disasters, there are often conditions, although they tend to be less stringent.
The simple fact is that the bulk of development funding is tied to the
political, military, and commercial interests of the donor country.
My premise in this book is that the entire mechanism for delivering development aid has evolved over time into a bureaucratic and fragmented system that is no longer effective in meeting the objectives of
the donors, let alone the recipients. Development funds are meted out
in discrete chunks for specific projects which are not viewed in holistic terms by either donor or recipient. Donor countries often send in
their own companies, non-profit organizations, experts, and suppliers
to implement projects which are one-off in nature and not part of a
comprehensive, multi-year national strategy. Thus, a school is not part
of an education strategy; a bridge is not part of a national public works
plan; a training program for farmers is not part of a broader agricultural
initiative; solar panels are not integrated into the national energy grid,
and so on. A given project may have a life of two or three years, almost
never beyond the term of office of the government of the donor country.
And when the funding stops, the project often collapses, either because it
cannot be maintained, or because no one knows how, or has the will, to
find the new leadership and funding necessary to sustain it. The recipient
country has usually had a minimal role in implementing the project in
the first place, and so has not benefited by building the domestic capacity
xiv | The Haiti Experiment
xvi
in industry, professional services, management, or government oversight
that would allow it to continue the project that has been initiated.
Put more simply, development aid is both sides of a carrot-and-stick
approach: the “carrot” is money for projects, in return for specified
policies and actions on the part of the recipient government; the “stick”
is the threat of withdrawal of that money by the donor country, if those
policies and actions are not followed.
What I observed in the development system as it now operates,
both internationally and in Haiti, is not only incredibly inefficient,
but lacks an impact commensurate with the vast sums of money being
spent to improve the lives of poor and disenfranchised people. It is
equally inefficient in meeting the range of strategic needs of the donor
countries. The world has become too complex and interconnected for
the simplistic carrot-and-stick system to work.
I would go even further to say that the current overall levels of development funding from donor countries—were the funds to be used
more efficiently and in full partnership with the recipient nations—
could be reduced by as much as a third and still have a significantly
greater impact than at their previous levels.
Over the past decade or so, there have been many calls for a change in
development assistance, including the need for ownership of the development process by recipient nations. Donor governments, including
the United States, have been enthusiastic in expressing their support
for this concept. But it is nowhere to be seen in action and lives only at
conferences, summits, and high-level retreats. In order for it to work,
there needs to be an entirely new model for delivering aid. Tweaks to
the existing system will not have much effect, because the system itself
is based on principles that have long outlived their usefulness. We must
progress further than the development equivalent of rearranging the
deck chairs on the Titanic. What is needed now is a way to experiment
with a new system for delivering aid that learns from the past, both
from what works and what does not, and incorporates all the checks
and balances needed to protect the interests of both funders and recipients as more equal partners in development.
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction | | xvii
xv
Haiti is the perfect place for this experiment: a country where the
ranking on just about every index of individual, family, community
well-being, and government efficiency is about the lowest in the world.
For once, this is an advantage. If an experiment in changing the way
development aid is delivered can succeed here, it could succeed just
about anywhere in the world. And Haiti is a small enough country
that the experiment would be manageable, the outputs measurable,
and the lessons extractable.
This book weaves together several themes. It begins with a short
history of Haiti, because this background is key to putting my own
story in context, and to understanding the country’s current problems.
To this is added, from late 2004 onwards, a narrative of my own direct
experience in providing humanitarian assistance in Haiti as events
unfolded around me. This includes going into the gang-controlled
slum of Cité Soleil to deliver food in 2006; supporting a wide range
of education services in various parts of the country; helping with
the aftermath of the food riots in Port-au-Prince in 2008; overseeing
emergency services to around 80,000 of the victims of the January
2010 earthquake—including employing up to 2,000 people at a time
from the tent camps; and helping to support the first responders to the
cholera outbreak in late 2010.
Over these seven and a half years, it is the experience of working
with small-scale farmers that has had the greatest impact in shaping
my views of Haiti and development assistance. These farmers represent a significant and untapped potential for reversing the fortunes
of the country. With the support and active engagement of The Timberland Company, I led a team that created a community-managed
agroforestry program that now generates one million trees a year and
has increased the agricultural output of 2,000 participating farmers by
as much as 40 percent.
Even though Haiti went from being mostly self-sufficient in food
production in the mid-1980s to importing close to 60 percent of what
its people now consume, small-scale or “smallholder” farming is still
the main source of income for two-thirds of Haiti’s working popula-
xviii
TheHaiti
HaitiExperiment
Experiment
xvi | |The
tion. We developed a simple system that combines tree planting with
an agricultural service to improve food crops, building on the farmers’
own long history of intensive small-plot agriculture. And now, the most
disadvantaged people in one of the most disadvantaged countries in the
world are defying the odds, as they transform their own lives and that
of their communities. The results are not only gratifying, but embody
practical lessons for Haiti and the rural poor around the world.
In recounting my own work in the fields of education, agriculture,
health, and various aspects of emergency assistance—six years with Yéle
Haiti and a year and a half with smallholder farmers—I will also share
the insights that have led to my current, and admittedly somewhat
radical, proposal regarding the changes needed in the field of development assistance. These recommendations come together in the fifth
and final chapter, in which I propose Haiti as the subject of a ten-year
experiment for exploring a new methodology for delivering development aid that will be of benefit to the entire world—if it succeeds. And
if it does not succeed, Haiti is still worthy of having the opportunity
to change a destiny that has been handicapped by monumental forces,
both internal and external, from the moment its heroic slave revolt
launched a new nation in 1804.
I first visited Haiti two centuries later, in November 2004. Two
important statistics about the country were added to my list at that
time: there were up to fifteen kidnappings a week and the bodies of
three or four of those murdered during the night were frequently on
display the next day by the side of the main airport road. I confirmed
that my life insurance policy was up to date, that my wife knew where
to find my will… and began my odyssey.
| 133
4
GREEN GLORY:
Working With Small-scale Farmers to Plant Trees
and Improve Agriculture
HAITI, 2009. Richard St. Barbe Baker, to whom I have dedicated this
book, was an early mentor. I met this forester, author, and conservationist while I was a university student in London, England, in the
late 1970s. He spent a lifetime helping to restore and maintain what
he called “the green glory of the forests of the earth,” and he was a
pioneer in taking forestry from the confines of a professional discipline
to a movement that involved entire communities. With a lifetime of
practical examples of work to choose from, it was his early experience
in Africa that particularly inspired me. St. Barbe, as he was called by
his friends and colleagues, had been assistant conservator of forests in
Kenya in the early 1920s. Concerned that the colonial government of
which he was a part was cutting down huge swaths of trees without
any corresponding effort to reforest, he enlisted the native Kikuyu to
form a volunteer tree planting organization that became known as the
“Men of the Trees.” What set St. Barbe apart from other foresters was
his ability to get the voluntary cooperation of local people by tapping
into their culture. With the Kikuyu, that meant creating a secret society of tree planters who took part in a ritual dance initiation. Wearing
full war regalia and carrying shields and spears, they pledged to serve as
“forest scouts” by planting trees and protecting the forests.
From the moment I first set foot in Haiti, there was no question
that, regardless of the initial focus of my work, it had to include a contribution to reforesting the country. Exactly how that would happen
134 | The Haiti Experiment
was unclear. Two early experiments, one in forestry and the second in
agriculture, were each failures, albeit instructive: sometimes our biggest
mistakes can lead to the most ground-breaking ideas.
The experiment in forestry that I undertook in 2005 centered
on forming a national coalition of Haitian environmental NGOs to
establish a series of tree nurseries across the country. This effort fell
apart quickly, when, at the first sight of potential funding, one of the
NGOs tried to take it over for their own financial benefit. Two lessons
came from this failure. First, take care in choosing your partners, as
one wrong step can create problems before you even get started. The
second lesson came from the collective know-how I gleaned from the
NGOs that had participated in some twenty years of planting trees in
Haiti: it was clear that the only successful ventures involved working
with small-scale, or smallholder, farmers.
The 2008 agricultural experiment was called “Together for Haiti,”
described in Chapter 2. Following the food crisis earlier that year,
I had formed a coalition of like-minded organizations to work as
a team to provide food, create jobs, and support local agriculture.
The project itself was mostly a failure, except for the small and successful pilot program that involved providing high quality seeds to
smallholder farmers. A simple thing to do, but it had a significant
impact on the farmers, because they had never been able to afford
the higher-yield seed that would bring them a corresponding higher
income. In the brief time spent with these farmers, I was surprised
to learn that they received no support of any kind from the government. Having grown up in the rural Canadian West, we took the
government-run agricultural extension service for granted. I simply
assumed that all farmers had a support system. But I quickly learned
that most farmers in Haiti had never in their lifetime had a visit from
the Ministry of Agriculture.
And then along came the Timberland Company. Wyclef had a
commercial endorsement deal with this popular line of footwear
and outdoor apparel. In early 2009, the company expressed interest in extending their involvement with Wyclef to supporting tree
Green Glory | 135
planting in Haiti through Yéle.
Timberland first proposed establishing a park in Port-au-Prince,
drawing on their tradition of creating and improving urban green spaces
using teams of local volunteers in various parts of the world. I countered
by suggesting that the desperate need for trees in Haiti was so far beyond
the scale of a park that the company might want to consider something
on a larger scale. I shared a copy of a concept paper I had just written on
tree planting and environmental restoration in Haiti that had been commissioned by a US foundation. To my delight, they were immediately
receptive and asked me to come up with a proposal.
It is one thing to be forever pushing and advocating for something,
but how often does a major corporation, particularly one with a reputation for being an industry leader in environmental and social responsibility, respond with “Yes!” followed by “How?”?
Agroforestry experiment
Three disasters in Haiti: the global food crisis in early 2008, the set of
four storms in late summer of 2008, and the devastating 2010 earthquake, collectively resulted in a blizzard of papers with plans for helping Haiti recover. These papers were generated by a dazzling array of
research organizations, think-tanks, governments, NGOs, institutions,
and consulting companies. I eagerly read many of these documents.
But in almost all of them, I was shocked to discover that there were two
key issues missing: agriculture and trees. All the papers dealt with job
creation, improving education, investing in infrastructure, addressing
corruption, and increasing security. And while they might have had a
sentence or two bemoaning the lack of trees or a paragraph on the sad
state of agriculture, neither issue was a focus of their recommendations
for helping the country recover. One notable exception was an excellent paper by Robert Maguire for the United States Institute of Peace
called “Haiti After the Donors’ Conference: A Way Forward,” which
dealt with agriculture and trees at length.
To me, it is glaringly obvious that, while the other problems must
all be addressed in tandem, it would be complete folly to ignore the
fundamental challenges of Haiti’s lack of trees and the sorry state of the
country’s agricultural sector. With less than 2 percent of tree cover left—
one recent estimate sets the figure as low as 1.4 percent—the country
is moving from “tropical” to “tropical desert.” Every major storm sends
rain cascading down hillsides completely denuded of trees, resulting in
untold damage from flooding. Topsoil has been washed away, leaving
rocks perched on top of hard, baked subsoil. In agricultural terms,
Haiti went from being largely self-sufficient in producing its own food
in the mid-1980s, to now importing 58 percent of the food it consumes. This trend was matched by the decline of farm income, massive
migration to the cities, and a dependence on food imports. Even with
these pressures, two-thirds of the workforce is employed in agriculture,
according to a 2011 World Bank report. I will never be convinced that
it makes sense for a poor country like Haiti to spend an average of 80
percent of its export earnings to pay for imported food, when there
exists a vast and capable reserve of smallholder farmers, who, if they
were to receive just a little bit of technical assistance, could go back to
producing much of the country’s food, while increasing employment
and income levels in the balance.
The lack of trees and the sorry state of agriculture are closely interconnected. As farm income declined beginning in the mid-1980s, more
farmers turned to cutting down trees to produce charcoal for the increasing urban population. Already decreased to 5 percent by then, tree cover
was further reduced over the next two decades to its current 2 percent
or less. Fewer trees meant more farms were abandoned as entire watersheds collapsed or shrank, one after the other, throughout the country.
And when a watershed is compromised, rivers dry up and ground water
is greatly depleted. Irrigation becomes more difficult, and sometimes
impossible, in a climate in which water is required to grow most crops.
As I set out to respond to the Timberland challenge, it was clear to
me that for any plan to work, it had to be based on a combination of
agriculture and tree planting, the discipline known as agroforestry. In
the early 1980s, Richard St. Barbe Baker had introduced me to one of
the worlds’ leading authorities on agroforestry, Zhu Zhaohua, from
Green Glory | 137
the Chinese Academy of Forestry. I subsequently hosted Prof. Zhu on
a tour of Canada in 1985, and the images he showed of food crops
interspersed with trees caused a sensation at the time, as the extent of
China’s use of agroforestry was largely unknown in the West. Those
images had a profound impact on me, and I now drew on that inspiration in a very pragmatic way.
The challenge was not how to combine planting trees and growing
food crops; it was how to introduce the idea in a practical manner to
farmers. Just asking them to plant trees was not enough of an incentive, even with an education component to teach the value of trees
in stabilizing and improving the soil, helping to increase water retention, and so on. I consulted with Wangari Maathai, the founder of
the Green Belt Movement and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize,
whom I had originally met through St. Barbe, and who had become
a good friend. In her successful program in Kenya, women grew trees
and received incremental payments once the trees were planted and
until they reached maturity. But I felt this would not work in Haiti,
because we did not have the organizational capacity to monitor the
trees as Wangari did with her Green Belt Movement.
Finally, a simple idea presented itself: why not ask farmers to volunteer to grow the trees in exchange for an agricultural service that
would help them significantly increase their food crop yields by receiving better crop seeds, tools, and training? Their work to grow the trees
would be paid for through the additional income they received as a
result of higher yields.
At first this seemed too simple. Surely this was already being done.
I asked around in Haiti, and there was no program of this kind. I
checked with various international sources, and no one was aware of an
existing operation based on this model. I am still sure it has been done
elsewhere, but to date, I have not been able to find an example of this
particular concept having been implemented.
However good the idea, it would not have moved from theory to
practice had it not been for a young Haitian agronomist named Timote
Georges. Suzie Sylvain, a Yéle colleague who had been a vital part of
our organization since its inception, introduced me to an organization
called Trees for the Future. Their program director, Ethan Budiansky,
subsequently introduced me to Timote, who was the Country Director
for Trees for the Future on the ground in Haiti. Both Ethan and Timote
would become critical to the success of the new agroforestry program.
In mid 2009, before we formed a working partnership, Timote took
me to see one of the tree nurseries he had created and was currently
operating with the involvement of smallholder farmers. Located in the
Artibonte Valley north of Port-au-Prince, this was exactly what I had
envisioned: totally off the grid, extremely simple in operation, based
entirely on organic principles, and run by local farmers. The only thing
missing was the incentive component, linking it to food crops. When I
explained that concept to Timote, he immediately embraced it, and in
a matter of hours we had the whole program outlined.
I explained that we wanted to start a pilot program in the farming
area outside Gonaïves, and that we would like to build an entirely new
operation from scratch and not try and adapt any existing nurseries
that Timote was already implementing. This was not a hard sell: Timote
was keen to try this new idea. He was, in turn, backed by Ethan on the
US side and together we set out to experiment with this new model.
Gonaïves was chosen because of Yéle’s years of activity there, and the
fact that the city had been devastated by the 2008 floods, made worse
because of the lack of tree cover surrounding the city.
Within a month, Yéle Haiti and Trees for the Future had joined forces
to create “Yéle Vert,” incorporating the French word for “green.” The
resulting community-based agroforestry program combined tree planting and sustainable agriculture in a way that would improve rural livelihoods, increase food production, and contribute to restoring the environment. With input from Timote and Ethan, I prepared an extensive
document describing the proposed rollout of the program, along with a
detailed multi-year budget, and we presented the plan to Timberland.
Nothing would have happened past this point had it not been for Jeff
Swartz, the creative and dynamic president and CEO of Timberland.
He is the third generation of the Swartz family to lead the company, his
Green Glory | 139
grandfather Nathan having started its predecessor in 1952. The company
was subsequently sold in late 2011, but two years of Jeff’s support was
enough to ensure the continuing engagement of senior management.
Jeff’s early endorsement of the overall concept set things in motion
in 2009, but it was up to Margaret Morey-Reuner, senior manager for
values marketing at Timberland, to make it work.
NGOs generally look to corporate sponsors to hand over money and,
from that point on, to stay out of their business. This had certainly been
my own approach over the years. But from the outset, it was different
with Timberland. Through the involvement of both Jeff and Margaret,
each in different roles, it was made clear that this was not their company’s philosophy. Timberland had a very different, hands-on approach,
and a very different reason for being involved. Most companies, with
motives ranging from greenwashing to a genuine commitment to the
environment, ultimately focus on the public relations value of their relationship with an NGO when it comes to something like planting trees. I
was only to learn years later that Timberland had a very different reason:
they were considering opening a manufacturing operation in Haiti and
wanted to make sure, before taking any steps in that direction, that they
could make a real and tangible contribution to restoring the environment. They could not justify setting up shop in a country with such a
denuded environment if they were not first convinced that they could
make some contribution to restoring that environment.
They were also launching a new line of Earthkeepers footwear, with
US$2 from the sale of each pair of shoes or boots going to support
their two tree planting programs, the new one in Haiti and the other
already underway in China. I have to admit being absolutely thrilled
when I first picked up an Earthkeepers boot in a Timberland store and
saw the Yéle Haiti logo on the inside of the tongue. It is one thing to
deal with all the legal paperwork, mockups of artwork, and marketing
strategies, but quite another to walk into a store and see the real deal.
If I had any advice to offer other NGOs when approaching a corporate sponsor to underwrite environmental activities—or any other
form of non-profit service for that matter—it would be to look for
a company that has a business reason for supporting you. Any time
you can find a sponsor that is engaged in philanthropy that ultimately
affects their corporate bottom line, as was the case with Timberland,
you will have a true partner and not just a source of funding.
Timberland was also the driving force that transformed Yéle Vert
into a self-financing operation. It would have been an effective agroforestry program that lasted only as long as external funding kept
flowing, but Timberland was key to turning it into a self-financing and
farmer-managed operation, designed to function effectively long after
the funding stopped. This they did by introducing a business discipline
which, when combined with an NGO capacity to engage farmers at the
local level, ultimately created something with real potential to transform farming in Haiti. More details on this later; meanwhile, back to
how it all got started.
In October 2009, we signed an agreement between Yéle Haiti and
Timberland, in which the latter agreed to be the sponsor and partner
for the new Yéle Vert program. In a second agreement, Yéle Haiti hired
Trees for the Future as the subcontractor responsible for implementing
the program. I had overall responsibility, Timote headed up day-to-day
operations on site, and Margaret and Ethan worked with me on the
administrative details.
Just as Richard St. Barbe Baker had created a secret society of tree
planters in Kenya in the early 1920s, drawing on local cultural traditions, so Timote came up with the idea of basing Yéle Vert on existing
local farming associations. Almost every smallholder farmer throughout Haiti is a member of one or another informal local association.
This is a phenomenon not only among farmers: almost every one of the
working poor throughout Haiti is a member of a professional association. It was Timote who recommended that Yéle Vert begin by inviting
the farmer associations, and not the farmers themselves, to take part.
As a result of this important recognition of the existing local structure,
twenty-five associations in the farming area northwest of Gonaïves
immediately signed up as word spread that this program was respectful
of the local traditions and worth a try.
Green Glory | 141
The first innovation of Yéle Vert was to get farmers to plant trees by
“paying” them in the form of an agricultural service that increased food
crop yields. The second was to organize the program as a network of
existing farmer associations, so that it was seen as a natural extension of
the way in which farmers had always organized themselves.
In December 2009, we rented the land for the main tree nursery in a
small farming community called Mapou, about fifteen minutes from the
outskirts of Gonaïves. Land was donated for a second, smaller nursery
in another nearby farming community called Rofilie. The plan was to
eventually construct six of these smaller nurseries, all on land donated
by the community. The tree nurseries had to be disbursed in this way
so as to be close enough to the plots of participating farmers that they
could transport the trees by wheelbarrow. The overall operation, and all
trainings, would be conducted from the main nursery. To facilitate these
activities, plans were made to build two structures: a three-room office
and a traditional choucoune, which has a thatched roof supported by
poles and open sides allowing ventilation. The office was for administration and storage of seeds and equipment, while the choucoune was for
training sessions and regular meetings of the farmers.
We all agreed that the first tree seeds in this pilot operation would
be planted starting on January 15, 2010, which turned out to be unrealistic because of the earthquake a few days earlier. But because the
earthquake did not affect the Gonaïves area directly, the planting was
delayed by only a few weeks.
Yéle Vert began as a program under the auspices of Yéle Haiti, but
success brought with it ever increasing management demands over
time. It became clear that, in order for this program to reach its true
potential, it needed to become a stand-alone operation. Once again, it
was Timberland that played a critical role by encouraging us to create
a new NGO that would continue the program. Out of that discussion was born the “Smallholder Farmers Alliance.” As this book goes
to print, we have formed not one, but two new organizations. Smallholder Farmers Alliance is the new Haitian NGO that is now managing and guiding the agroforestry program, acknowledging the critical
role played by Yéle Haiti and Trees for the Future, but moving ahead,
independent of both. I serve as president of Smallholder Farmers Alliance and Timote is Country Director; we are both co-founders.
The second organization involves the incorporation of the farmers
who implemented the pilot program into a separate agroforestry cooperative called “Alyans Ti Plantè-Gonaïves,” using the Creole for Smallholder Farmers Alliance. As of May, 2012, there are now 1,000 farm
households that are members, through their respective associations; this
translates to some 2,000 farmers, when considering that most farms
involve the equal participation of both husband and wife. Between
them, the farmers in Alyans Ti Plantè-Gonaïves have approximately
1,500 hectares of land (just over 3,700 acres), and together, they now
operate a total of eight tree nurseries—one main nursery plus seven
smaller community nurseries—with a combined annual output of one
million trees a year.
Meanwhile, Timberland opened a shoe factory in Haiti in late 2011,
located in the Northeastern city of Ouanaminthe.
Global food fight
I was raised in a small prairie town in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, surrounded by farms. It was an idyllic place to grow up,
with waving fields of grain, mostly wheat, stretching to the horizon
in every direction. The average size of farms in that area is just over
two square miles (1,280 acres). I took for granted that farming always
involved tractors, trucks, combines, synthetic fertilizer, and a plethora
of chemical-based herbicides and pesticides. To us, this was just the
natural order of things; we did not know it was the quintessential definition of industrial farming.
Now I understand that the farming community in which I was
raised was part of a significant global phenomenon. Humanity bases
two-thirds of its diet on three grains: corn (also known as maize), rice,
and wheat; and the livestock we eat also depends largely on grains for
feed. What is truly amazing is that since the early 1960s, grain production around the world nearly tripled, as the world population doubled.
Green Glory | 143
Had grain production not increased so dramatically, there would not
have been enough food to feed the world; and this increase in food
production was possible only because of industrial farming.
But it was not until I started working in Haiti that I thought about
the consequences of industrial farming. It seemed a noble thing that a
solution had been found to feed the world, and that my forbearers and
the farmers I grew up with were part of this effort. Canada is among
the six countries that, between them, supply 90 percent of global grain
exports, the others being the United States, France, Australia, Argentina,
and Thailand. It took a dramatic event in Haiti to tear away the veil concealing a jerry-rigged, dysfunctional, and inefficient system, into which
the unsuspecting farmers of Saskatchewan had been unwittingly drawn.
There is nothing quite so effective in garnering public attention as
mass protests and riots in dozens of countries at the same time, all in
response to the same situation. The global food crisis in early 2008 was
a popular uprising in response to a major rise in food prices. The bill
came due for a dysfunctional global food system that relied too much
on industrial farming, and millions upon millions of the poor were
being asked to pick up the tab. They said “no!” in a collective roar, loud
enough to reverberate around the world.
In Haiti there were violent riots throughout the country in March
and April of 2008 to protest food prices. President René Préval sacked
his prime minister and cabinet not long after protesters tried to storm
the presidential palace. While a new prime minister was appointed
some months later, most of the previous cabinet was quietly returned
to office after the protests died down.
So how did the global food crisis come about? First, some background: The tripling of world grain production since the early 1960s
did not happen by accident. The economists, planners, and politicians who were re-drawing the postwar map of the world in the
1950s and early 60s saw the need to restructure global agriculture
in order to make it more productive. Approximately half the world’s
workers at that time were farmers, but the majority of the food was
already being grown by the minority involved in large scale industrial
farming. This had the advantage of producing food more cheaply
than the small-scale farmers who constituted the majority could
do. Steps were taken to focus research, resources, and regulations to
support industrial farming, and then to export the increased grain
production to poor and underdeveloped countries, whose farmers
could not afford to invest in industrial methods. Over the course of
forty years, the huge increase in grain production was almost entirely
the result of increased support for industrial farming. The good news
was increased grain production. The bad news was that, behind the
scenes, the original concept was flawed from the outset and matters
kept getting worse over forty years until the dam burst.
There is, to my mind, a very clear and necessary role for industrial farming. But it is not the sole answer to feeding the world,
at the expense of smallholder farmers. At first, industrial farming
seemed like a simple and elegant formula for providing food for
a growing world population. Modern, efficient, logical. Take the
burden off poor countries by growing cheap food elsewhere and
exporting it to them so that their rural poor could abandon farming
and move to the cities, buy cheap imported food, and become part
of the urban industrial model that, supposedly, would help improve
economies everywhere.
It was not long, however, before unforeseen problems with this
formula surfaced. The smallholder farmers who lost their incomes
because they could not compete with cheap imported food moved
in record numbers to cities that were not able to offer them jobs. The
result was often increased poverty. In order to keep local food prices
down, it became necessary to lower import tariffs in the poor counties receiving the cheap food from abroad. But this meant reduced
tax income to run those governments. At the same time, high tariffs
were maintained in most of the countries growing the food, because
they would otherwise face unfair competition from poor countries.
And when it seemed that the exported food would not be cheap
enough, the rich countries began to tap their own taxpayers to give
ever larger subsidies to their industrial farmers. But that would only
Author photo.
Green Glory | 145
William Charles Moss.
The 2,000 farmers in the pilot agroforestry cooperative of the Smallholder Farmers
Alliance (SFA) currently grow one million trees a year in eight nurseries. They plant
the trees on their own farms and community land.
SFA agroforestry cooperative member Jacqueline Castin, shown here holding the
fruit from a papaya tree she planted on her farm near Mapou. Jacqueline sells the
papaya to supplement her farm income.
Sebastian Petion.
Author photo.
Rigaud Joseph, shown here with his sorghum crop in 2011. Farmers in the Smallholder Farmers Alliance cooperative receive seed, training, and tools that help them
increase their crop yields by an average of 40 to 50 percent.
Children of farmer members attending an environmental education class. Full time
teacher Rosie Despergnes (left, holding leaf ) is assisted by noted Haitian environmentalist Jane Wynne (right), who is also an SFA board member.
Sebastian Petion.
Green Glory | 147
Timote Georges.
Children of farmers are shown here helping to fill some of the 700,000 bags used each
year to transplant tree seedlings into plastic bags filled with a soil-compost mixture.
Cooperative farmer members planting a “living fence” of trees to define their property and keep out wandering livestock. Fences made of posts and barbed wire are too
expensive for most smallholder farmers in Haiti.
Sebastian Petion.
Louis Dario Louis.
Author Hugh Locke with Timote Georges (center), co-founder of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance and our Country Director in Haiti. We are conferring with Thanael Jean
(left), one of the agroforestry technicians with the SFA cooperative near Gonaïves.
Farmer members of the SFA agroforestry cooperative near Gonaïves grow one million trees a year in eight nurseries and then transport the seedlings, usually by wheelbarrow, to their nearby farms and community land for transplanting.
Green Glory | 149
work if the poor countries promised never to give their own farmers
any subsidies, a general policy that was reinforced by making the
removal of all farm subsidies a condition for continued development funding from the rich countries. And because these actions
all seemed profoundly unfair, they were collectively given a name
that meant the opposite of what was actually happening: the whole
system became known as “trade liberalization,” when, in reality, it
meant systematic trade restriction.
Over time, what could originally be outlined in an elevator ride
became a book. The book became many volumes. The volumes became
an entire library. Every time there was a problem, more regulations were
added to prop up the system, so that eventually the entire collection
was so large that nobody knew exactly what all the rules were. Here was
a complex system rather like a computer in need of regular updates to
guard against viruses. But suddenly, with little warning, the computer
crashes. The original formula in which industrial farms would feed the
world had been patched up so many times, that it was finally unable
to correct itself in response to a set of conditions that caused a total
systems failure known as the “global food crisis” of 2008.
There was no one trigger for the food crisis. The real story is complex.
Start with core numbers: the world’s population is now growing faster
and is close to consuming more food than the world can produce,
because the increase in the yields of industrial farming peaked years
ago. Add to this an increase in the cost of the fossil fuel needed to run
industrial farm machinery and operate the ships that take the food to
markets around the world. Then factor in the growing prosperity of
countries like China, where people are eating more meat, which in
turn requires more grain to be diverted to livestock. Add to this the
significant increase in the use of biofuels for cars and the resulting
loss of arable land from food production. And to top it all off, legalized gambling by investors who speculate in the agricultural futures
market. Without even considering the significant long-term impact on
the environment and human health, this set of factors came together
to create the perfect storm in food prices.
Whatever the immediate causes for the food crisis, the bigger story
is that the entire global agricultural sector has not been managed in
humanity’s collective best interest. Industrial agriculture was given
every advantage and forced to carry the burden for generating most
of the world’s food, while hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers
had much of their support withdrawn. Simultaneously, regulations and
laws were put in place to systematically reduce smallholder output and
force them to leave farming. Thus, smallholder farmers—who still constitute close to one third of the world’s workers—are not being given
the opportunity to help bridge the gap, even as industrial farming has
reached the limits of its capacity to produce. This is the situation that
caused the global food crisis of 2008. Because of its artificial structure
favoring the minority and working actively against the majority, the
agricultural sector had become too complex and was unable to respond
and adjust to the set of conditions that triggered the crisis.
While the food crisis is no longer on the front page, there is no question that the underlying conditions have not gone away. We still need
to grow more food: by 2050 we will have added the current equivalent
of two Chinas to the global population. Ahead lay two forks in the
road, each pointing to a potential solution: one road leads to a new
green revolution with supercharged genetically engineered seeds (commonly referred to as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs) that
will significantly increase the yield of existing industrial farms. The
other leads to a smallholder farm revolution that will finally support
the world’s 900 million currently marginalized smallholder farmers,
enabling them to improve their sustainable and ecologically friendly
practices to meet growing global demand.
In reality, both roads have a place. But from my vantage point there
is nothing resembling an even playing field between the two. Powerful forces are already lining up behind a new GMO green revolution
and discounting even the possibility of discussing a smallholder farm
revolution. If the latter are considered at all, they are seen as merely
incidental players, to be enlisted to ensure that the GMO juggernaut
achieves maximum global coverage.
Green Glory | 151
Meet the farmers
I would like to introduce you to one family in order to give you an
understanding of the life of smallholder farmers in Haiti.
Gustave and his wife Rosemary (I am not sharing their family
name) and their seven children live on a farm near the tiny community
of Rofilie. Gustave is fifty-three years old, and Rosemary is forty-eight.
The children range from three to the eldest, Guibert, who is nineteen.
Gustave and Rosemary, assisted by Guibert and other family members,
are equal partners in farming their one hectare of land, half of which
they own, while the other half is rented. The family also includes two
older women, Rosemary’s mother and an aunt of Gustave, bringing the
total count to eleven people in this farm household.
They live together in a two-room house with a cement floor, wood
frame walls, plastered inside and out with packed earth painted light
yellow, and a corrugated tin roof. There is one door, painted turquoise
blue with a red frame, and three windows without glass, but which can
be closed using wooden shutters painted to match the door. The roof
extends over the front of the house to form a sheltered area. The front
room has a table in the middle with a single exposed light bulb suspended over it, power being supplied by a jerry-rigged link to a nearby
power line—and it is likely that no bill ever arrives for this service.
There is also a cabinet in the front room with a display of artificial
flowers and several pieces of exuberant porcelain. The room is immaculately clean, as is the second room, with its several beds and almost no
space between them.
The house opens onto a courtyard of hard, packed earth, bordered on one side by a storage building, of the same construction as
the house, and a pigeon coop. The other two sides of the space are
defined by a fence made of woven palm fronds. Again, all is clean
and well organized. In the courtyard and the covered area in front of
the house are a number of metal and plastic chairs, as this is where
the family spends most of their time when at home. This outdoor
area also serves as the kitchen. Set into the courtyard surface is a
small charcoal pit with an open metal structure that holds one pot
at a time for cooking.
Upon enquiring about bathroom facilities, I am informed by
Gustave, with a sweep of his hand aimed at the outdoor area beyond
the compound that, depending on which direction you want to go,
you will find the “bathroom.” Bathing is done in a large metal bowl in
a sheltered area near the compound.
In a second adjoining courtyard, there is a chicken coop built by
Gustave, with six chickens on three levels, each enclosed with wire
netting. The structure is supported by four corner posts that raise the
whole coop several feet off the ground. An ingenious system of recycled
plastic pipes delivers water to each level from a storage tank on the top.
Also in this second courtyard is a cow that the oldest son Guibert is
responsible for milking each day.
It is a short walk from the family compound to the first part of their
farm. The field is bordered on one side by community land owned collectively by the neighbors, on which several cows are grazing contentedly. On this morning, the perfect stillness is broken by American rock
music blaring from a nearby house.
The farm itself consists of two separate fields together measuring
one hectare (just under 2.5 acres). The first field is a rectangular space
divided into several sections by a method dating back to the colonial
period, when plantation slaves were allowed to grow food for themselves on similar small plots. This farm, like those during slave times,
represents a particular type of intensive agriculture that reminded me
of the market gardens of my youth. On this one field are onions, eggplant, and corn, each growing within squares defined by a ridge of
earth about a foot high. These ridges allow the field to be flooded,
one square at a time, to irrigate the crops. On the second field, a few
minutes away, are the same smaller plots; but in this case, they are all
planted with beans.
In this area of Haiti, most farming involves irrigation. As you drive
down the dirt roads that connect the rural communities, you come
across small, one-story pumping stations that were originally installed
Green Glory | 153
during the Duvalier era, and are now kept running by the farmers.
They have a knack for keeping the ancient machinery going in the
absence of any government help. The pumping stations draw water
from underground sources and feed it into a network of hand-dug
irrigation channels, most no more than two feet deep, that crisscross
the whole area for hundreds of miles. The entire operation, other than
the pumping stations, is managed by hand. When the water needs
to be re-directed, earth is shoveled to plug up one route while the
embankment is broken to open another. Once off the roads, movement through the fields is mostly accomplished by walking along these
irrigation embankments.
Gustave and Rosemary have been part of Yéle Vert, and now the
Smallholder Farmers Alliance, since its inception in 2010. Touring
their farm in early 2012, there is clear evidence of the trees they have
planted on their land. The first field is surrounded on two sides by a
“living fence” that has been built up over the last two years by planting a combination of jatropha bushes and siwel trees. Jatropha is a
thorny bush that helps to keep livestock out, while the siwel has very
long, thin branches that are bent down and woven into the jatropha
to form a very dense enclosure. In addition to keeping out cattle
and other animals, living fences are very important for avoiding land
disputes. When you have two fields next to each other under similar
cultivation, the exact border can be hard to maintain. This is where
living fences come in, and they are significantly cheaper than those
made of posts and barbed wire, which are too expensive for most
farmers in Haiti.
While the living fence was clearly an asset, what excited me in
touring this farm were the six papaya trees in the middle of the field.
These had been grown as part of Yéle Vert and transplanted here by
Gustave and Rosemary in May of 2010. The trees were now about
twelve feet high, and the reason they worked here was that the foliage
began about seven feet above ground, and did not disrupt or shade the
crops. From seed to first fruit is about one year, and as of January 2012,
these six trees had each produced an average of eighty large papayas,
enough to significantly add to their overall farm income, as the fruit,
beyond what the family could eat, was sold.
Farmers in this part of Haiti grow three crops a year. Depending on
the arrival of seasonal rain, the crops are usually planted in April, July,
and December. Once stable and predictable, local weather patterns
have become much more erratic over the past decade and planting
is often delayed by several weeks or even a month. This causes problems for the farmers because it delays income and cuts down the time
needed to prepare the land between crops. All three seasons include the
planting of vegetables and corn, while sorghum is planted in April and
beans in December.
Typical of the 1,000 farm households taking part in the agroforestry cooperative, Gustave and Rosemary farm as partners. They farm
together and they both volunteer to tend the tree nurseries. In return
for that volunteer service, they receive trees to plant on their land and
seeds for their food crops. Visiting their field in January 2012, the
onions had been provided through the cooperative, as were the papaya
trees and the living fence; their second field was planted with beans
provided by the program.
While the partnership of husband and wife covers the operation of
the farms, Rosemary’s role in dealing with the household finances is
typical of most farm households: she is responsible for selling all the
produce at the outdoor market in Gonaïves and handles the money
for the household.
Gustave and Rosemary are also typical of other farmers involved
the cooperative. Finally able to get higher quality seed, some training, and good quality hoes and shovels, their yields increased and
income along with it. To give a specific example, their sorghum
harvest in July 2011, with seed provided by the cooperative, had
a 50 percent higher yield than any they had ever had. Out of their
overall operation on two fields and three seasons a year, sorghum
accounts for close to half their annual income. The higher yield of
sorghum meant that the family was able to send two of their children
to high school. This marked the first time in the family’s extended
Green Glory | 155
history when anyone was able to attend high school. Gustave was
fairly bursting with pride as he told me of this development. And it
was interesting that he and his wife choose a daughter as well as a
son, rather than two sons, for this privilege, as the culture definitely
favors boys over girls.
Gustave has an additional role as a member of the farmers’ committee. This is another of Timote’s very important innovations. He
realized that the farmers had to own the program from the outset. So
he had the farmers identify one leader from each of the twenty-five
participating farmer associations and began training them to oversee
both the tree nurseries and the agricultural service.
The resulting farmers’ committee is responsible for canvassing the
other farmers to find out what trees they want to grow and where they
will be planting them. This ensures that the use of the trees has been predetermined by the farmers themselves. The committee then has to find a
source of tree seeds, and, guided by Timote, negotiate the purchase price.
They oversee the planting schedule and care of the nurseries by the other
farmers. This is followed by organizing the entire community at planting time when the trees are taken from the nurseries and transplanted
on fields and community land. With one million trees a year now being
grown by the eight nurseries, this is no small undertaking.
The second major task of the farmers’ committee relates to food
crops. They canvas all the farmers as to what seeds they need and in
what quantity. Then the committee, again guided by Timote, must
find a source for that seed and negotiate the price. Once the seeds are
planted, the committee goes regularly to inspect the growing crops. Any
problems are reported back to Timote and his small team of agronomists and technicians and they help formulate a response. In the case
of insect control, this usually takes the form of a spray made from the
neem tree. This tree grows throughout Haiti, and the leaves are pressed
to extract oil that can be mixed with garlic, peppers and other natural
ingredients to make a spray. Different combinations are tested until an
effective solution is found.
The farmers’ committee consists entirely of volunteer farmers who
are members of the cooperative. The small paid staff of agronomists
serve as a resource to the committee, but they are not members. In this
way the farmers themselves become experts in every aspect of running
the program and have an ownership stake in the operation. That would
never have been the case if we had followed the typical top-down management style of most NGO programs.
Tree portraits
Now that you have met some of the farmers, I would like to introduce
you to five of the typical trees grown in our nurseries. It is one thing to
say that the trees are grown for their fruit, timber, and for fodder, but
what does that actually mean? In Haiti, there are close to two dozen
indigenous tree species, but these five have been chosen by the farmers
as most important.
My favorite by far is called Moringa oleifera, known locally as doliv
or benzoliv. This tree is both elegant and tough. While most trees are
initially grown in seed beds and then allowed to mature in plastic bags
until transplanting, the Moringa is so hardy that it is grown in the
ground and then pulled up to be transplanted. Not dug up with care
to keep soil on the roots. Rather, pulled out like a common weed and
planted in a field, where it begins to grow again very quickly. The result
is astonishing. Within a year the young tree can reach fifteen feet. The
leaves are very delicate, each a composite made up of many smaller
leaves, arranged off a central stem.
The drought-resistant Moringa is considered one of the world’s
most useful trees, because almost every part can be used for nutrition,
medicine, fodder, or water purification. The leaves have more protein
per weight than beans, making it unique among all known tree species.
The leaves can be eaten right off the tree, added to soup or rice, or dried
and ground into a nutritious powder as a protein supplement to almost
any other food. Although the Moringa grows in many tropical countries, it has not yet been sufficiently studied to verify its attributes. If
an organization such as UNICEF or the World Food Programme were
to one day endorse and begin using dried and ground Moringa leaves,
Green Glory | 157
Haitian farmers could be major producers.
I spoke earlier about Gustave and Rosemary’s papayas. In just three
months, a papaya tree grown from seed can be transplanted to a field,
and in a single year attains a height of twelve feet and produces around
eighty large papayas. There can be as many as twenty fruit ripening
on the tree at once—not modest little fruit, but huge papayas with an
incredibly sweet flavor.
Jatropha curcas, known locally as gwo medsiyen, is actually a bush.
I mentioned it earlier as a popular choice for living fences, as Gustave
and Rosemary did on their farm. This is a scrappy bush that even its
most ardent supporters could not call attractive. But it can flourish
under the harshest conditions, and the large thorns make it ideally
suited for keeping livestock out of fields. Many people know Jatropha
for the small fruit that is pressed to extract biofuel. Despite the initial
flurry of support for this process, it has never taken off in Haiti because
harvesting on a commercial scale would require planting large plantations and not just hedgerows. Proponents of biofuel have pledged
not to take over land currently being used to produce food, but it is
difficult to imagine how that could be prevented if there were a viable
market in Haiti for biofuel made from Jatropha.
And then there is Cedrela odorata, or sèd, Spanish cedar. An award
for the tree most suited to one thing would surely go to this species,
which produces perfect poles and planks. It has a single, straight
trunk and few side branches, except for a modest flurry at the top.
Within two years of planting, it can be harvested for use as a pole
up to fourteen feet high. Wait three more years, and it will be large
enough in girth for cutting into construction planks. It has the added
feature that, when harvested, the Cedrela grows back from the root.
A good example of how it is used is to be found in the family farm
compound of another couple, Anouce and Idelia, who live near the
rural community of Mapou. In November, 2010 they planted fifty
Cedrela on their quarter-acre compound, along with five papaya—all
of which they had helped to raise in the tree nursery cooperative in
Mapou. The couple have already been harvesting the papaya and will
be able to begin harvesting and selling the Cedrela trees later this year.
Between the papaya and Cedrela, they will receive a reliable supplement to their income for years to come.
The Citrus sinensis, known locally as oranj, and in English as an
orange tree, seems somehow very stately. It will not be rushed, and
takes five years before it produces fruit. But it is worth the wait, because,
once started, it will bear bountiful crops of oranges for several decades.
The leaves are a glossy dark green and the flowers wonderfully fragrant.
Its introduction to this part of Haiti is an experiment, as it is a native
of more northerly regions near the coastal city of Cap-Haitien; but we
see no reason why it should not be as successful in Gonaïves.
Nurturing the nurseries
The eight nurseries that form the core of the pilot operation of the
Smallholder Farmers Alliance in Gonaïves are entirely off the grid. No
electricity lines, no water from faucets, no tractors or other fuel-powered machinery, and no lights, the single exception being the main
nursery, which has a generator to power two laptop computers and
an internet connection. When you walk into any of the nurseries you
see thousands of tree seedlings, either in long rows of raised beds or in
individual black plastic bags set in neat rows on the ground. Some trees
are transplanted with just bare roots, but most are started in the raised
beds and transplanted after a few months to individual dirt-filled black
plastic bags, where they grow for a few more months until they are
ready for transplanting onto the farmers’ land.
An ongoing activity at all the nurseries throughout the year is
preparing the soil and filling the bags. Try as I might to get the
men involved, this is something that is done by women farmers and
their children. My frequent participation in this task has failed to
inspire any of the male farmers to help out. Men manage the process
of sifting the soil through fine mesh and adding compost, while
women and children then fill hundreds of thousands of 6-inch-high
bags. It is a huge task in itself, apart from the work of transplanting
the seedlings into the soil-filled bags.
Green Glory | 159
Each nursery has a compost pile, the output of which is enhanced
with manure from nearby farms. In addition to providing compost
for each nursery, it is a practical training for farmers, who then create
their own compost operation. Even on hot days you can see steam
rising from the watering hole at the top of the compost piles. Protruding above the mound is the tall stake that extends downwards to the
bottom and which is used to continually “stir” the pile to ensure the
penetration of both air and water into its depths, ensuring that plant
matter breaks down efficiently.
Despite all our “off the grid” procedures, we are still dependent on
purchasing close to 700,000 black plastic bags a year, with the remaining 300,000 trees being grown for bare root transplanting. This constitutes the single largest non-personnel expenditure in the budget.
We looked into recycling Haiti’s ubiquitous 10-ounce plastic water
pouches, but after extensive experimentation over two years, we found
that only one species of tree would grow in them. Swietenya macrophylla, known locally as acajou, used for timber and fuel, was the only
tree that grows successfully in the recycled pouches.
But now we have a program to recycle the black bags. Children collect
them from the farmers after they are discarded, sort them, and receive a
credit for the reusable bags. That credit is then exchanged for illustrated
books which are paid for through the savings in purchasing new bags.
The books, in turn, are part of an environmental education
program for the children of the farmers who operate each of the
nurseries. A full-time teacher travels between the nurseries giving
classes to the children. They learn through a range of activities,
such as pressing strips of wet paper to make briquettes and learning songs incorporating tales of wildlife. This education component
came about as a result of an oft-repeated request from the farmers
shortly after the program began, and is now hugely popular.
Radical seed saving
Farmers the world over have traditionally saved seed from their grain
and vegetable harvests in order to plant again the following year. Haitian
farmers have the same tradition, but face two very real problems. First,
it is often difficult for them to save enough money to initially purchase
the better seeds that would give them higher yields; and when you start
off with poor seed, you will be stuck with it every season as you save and
replant. Better seed is not a reference to hybrids, but rather to openpollinated seed for crops that have been grown for generations in Haiti
and have adapted over time to the tropical climate. The second problem
is the financial pressure to sell the entire crop at the end of the season in
order to meet their family’s needs, and then having to struggle to get the
money together to buy new seed for the next planting season.
It is hard to believe, but the seemingly simple task of organizing
our farmers to contribute a portion of each season’s harvest to a community seed bank is a fundamentally radical step that, by definition,
engages the Smallholder Farmers Alliance in a worldwide debate about
the future of farming.
To put this debate into context, we need to step out from the fields
of Haiti. The foundation for the debate was spelled out in the last years
of the 18th century by the English scholar and economist Thomas
Robert Malthus. He was the first to put forward a theory of population which states that the number of people in the world increases in a
geometric ratio, while the food supply increases in an arithmetic ratio.
Population, he predicted, would increase faster than food supply, and
the result would eventually be famine, disease, or war.
Malthusian theory did not take into account other factors, such as
lowered birth rates. But his lasting influence has to do with two lines
on a graph: one line represents the global population and the other
line is our food supply. In 1960, there were three billion people in the
world and a projection that this number would double within thirty
years. Total global agricultural output was not growing at the same
rate, leading economists, policy makers, and politicians to propose a
wholesale move to industrial farming as the answer. At the time, as
mentioned earlier in this chapter, it was thought that a massive investment in industrial farming was the only possible way to double global
food output during the same period that population doubled. While it
Green Glory | 161
may not have been the only option, it certainly did increase food production, and it unquestionably averted what would have been a major
global catastrophe: population did not exceed food supply.
Now the two lines on the graph are once again getting perilously
close. Charting the population line, the United Nations announced
that the world population hit 7 billion in October, 2011. We are projected to be at 9.2 billion by 2050, an increase of more than two billion
people from 2012. The problem is that the food production line has
leveled off in recent years. Nearly 40 percent of the earth’s land surface
is already used for agriculture, and the UN’s Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) projects that 90 percent of the growth in crop
production between now and 2050 will need to come from higher
yields on existing farms. At the same time, they predict that developing countries will more than double their import of grains, because
the majority of the population growth will be in countries that are not
currently growing enough food to feed themselves.
It is industrial agriculture that has largely fed the world up to now,
but it has reached its limit, both in terms of available land and the
yields that can be achieved using hybrid seeds, synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Today’s equivalent of the economists, policy
makers, and politicians who advocated for industrial farming in the
1960s are again pushing for the same kind of global intervention, but
this time in favor of genetically modified seeds (GMOs): a “gene revolution.” If the combination of hybrid seed and industrial farming was
the answer in the 1960s, so goes the prevailing theory, then the worldwide introduction of GMOs to industrial farming is the answer to
feeding 75 million more people a year.
An issue of this magnitude is worthy of more exploration before
we get back to the fields of Haiti. First, what is the difference between
a hybrid seed and a GMO seed? All grain and vegetable seed is either
open-pollinated or hybrid. All GMO seeds are hybrids by definition,
but not all hybrids are GMOs.
Open-pollinated is a term that refers to seeds that produce the same
plant in successive generations. Pollination occurs with the help of
either bees, birds, or wind. You plant the crop, save some of the seed
from the harvest, and then use that saved seed to plant the next crop.
The saved seed will result in a plant that is similar to the parent. Over
long periods of time specific grains and vegetables will evolve and adapt
to local conditions; but in the process, they remain stable; that is, the
saved seed can be grown and will produce the same offspring.
Hybrid seeds are produced by crossing two parent varieties from the
same species, as in one species of tomato being crossed with another.
Hybrids are developed by plant breeders who are specialists in combining the best traits of separate varieties into new varieties that offer
higher yields, greater resistance to disease, and more vigor. One variety
of wheat, for example, might have a higher yield but the heavier seed
tends to make it fall over. It is then crossed with a second variety of
wheat that does not have such a high yield, but which has a stronger
stem. The first generation offspring from these two varieties will then
have both a high yield and a strong stem. However, the second generation will often revert to one or other of the parents and will not duplicate the positive first generation results. Greater uniformity is another
valuable characteristic in developing hybrids, because it makes it easier
to use machinery to harvest the resulting crops. Most farmers who
plant hybrid seed purchase it each growing season and do not save any
for the following season, either because the next generation of plants
will not match the first, or because they have signed a contract with the
company that produced the hybrid seeds which obliges the farmer not
to save seeds for replanting.
Hybrid seeds combine genes from different varieties of the
same species through controlled pollination, but it is still a natural
process. GMOs could never be produced in nature, because it
involves combining plant genes with those from animals, bugs,
fungi, and viruses. This process of combining plant with non-plant
genes can only be done in a laboratory by scientists. But by opening
up the gene pool beyond just those from plants, researchers are able
to come up with plant hybrids that are custom designed to meet all
kinds of very specific criteria, particularly higher yields than were
Green Glory | 163
ever possible with traditional hybrids.
So what, you may ask, is all the fuss about? Why is there so
much fear regarding GMOs in so many parts of the world? The
reasons vary, and high on the list are concerns about the environmental and health ramifications. But there are also concerns
that date back to the green revolution of the 1960s. As detailed
above, the massive international investment in industrial agriculture that began at that time required a range of trade policies in
order to work. These policies protected the countries producing
food for export and ensured that the poor countries importing the
food kept their import tariffs low and agreed not invest in smallholder farming. A good example is the US Congress passing of the
Bumpers Amendment in 1986 to the Foreign Assistance Act, which
bars the government from helping farmers in developing countries
to increase the yields of crops that could compete with staple US
exports to those same countries. Public policy in many rich nations
also ensured that research money went into developing hybrids and
the related synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides that these
hybrids need in order to produce maximum yields. In short, investment, regulations, and research were all lined up behind industrial
farming, with the result that smallholder farmers the world over
suffered the consequences. The orchestrated effort behind industrialized farming is fast transforming into a full symphony singing the
praises of GMOs, with nary a dissonant note to be heard.
There is one key difference, however, between the industrialized
farming strategy of old and the new worldwide expansion of GMOs
currently underway. Unlike the original green revolution that backed
industrial farming, the GMO revolution is being led by private companies that have taken out patents on their laboratory-generated seeds.
These private companies are responsible for some 90 percent of the
worldwide research in GMOs. By asking governments around the
world to enact laws to protect their investment, they have created a
situation whereby all farmers who use their GMO seeds will be breaking the law if they save seeds for replanting.
To put the issue into perspective, it is currently estimated that
approximately 80 percent of all grain and vegetables grown commercially on farms of all sizes come from hybrid seeds. If you break down
hybrid seed between conventional hybrids and GMOs, the GMO percentage of the overall total grain and vegetable production stood at
7 percent as of 2011. Many parts of the world, including more than
a dozen developing countries, are now experimenting with planting
GMOs, but so far some 90 percent of GMO use is concentrated in
only four countries: the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Canada.
But the use of GMOs is doubling, on average, every year.
The world faces the very real challenge of how to feed two billion
more people by 2050. We have already reached the limit of available
arable land, and the capacity of that land to produce food is only
enough to feed the current population, with a little to spare. One scenario is that GMOs will expand on their current trajectory and by 2015
will represent more than half of global grain and vegetable production.
Then, if there is one bad harvest in a significant industrial farming area,
investor speculation on the agricultural futures market could, as it has
in the past, send food prices through the roof. In a world in which food
is a commercial commodity, millions would starve as a result. And in
this scenario, they would starve not because there is not enough food
being produced, but because the food they need is grown in the wrong
place and controlled by companies whose business is not to feed the
starving, but to maximize shareholder returns.
I am not suggesting that industrial farming, hybrids—and even
GMOs, moving forward—do not have a vital role to play. They are
absolutely essential to feeding the world, and without them we would
long ago have faced a human catastrophe of historic proportions. What
I am suggesting is that we need a core change in the global agricultural
paradigm that will diffuse the extreme polarization that currently exists
between industrial and smallholder farming. We need to make room for
more sustainable and ecologically friendly practices that benefit from the
same kind of research, investment, trade regulations, and legal frameworks that are being extended to industrial farmers. The main beneficia-
Green Glory | 165
ries of this change would be the 900 million smallholder farmers around
the world who have been marginalized for generations, but who could
easily begin to fill an important gap in the global food chain.
Ultimately, this whole issue goes back to Gustave and Rosemary
and their sorghum harvest in July 2011. By volunteering to grow trees,
they earned the high yield sorghum seed that was used to plant that
crop, seed that came from a seed bank managed by the farmers’ committee. Participating farmers receive seed for food crops at the beginning of each growing season, and then return the same amount when
they harvest their crops. To get the seed bank started, and to regularly
replenish it, we buy high quality open-pollinated, non-hybrid seed.
Before any harvested seed is added to the bank, it is first checked by
the committee. In this way the seed source for the community is maintained at a high level, resulting in an average of 40 to 50 percent higher
yields. These increased yields are not only based on better seeds, but
also better farming practices that includes the use of compost, not
burning off plant remnants at the end of the season, and more controlled spacing between plants.
Gustave and Rosemary are like many other smallholder farmers.
They save seeds from season to season; except that in their case, they are
now doing so as part of a cooperative of other farmers and in a manner
that increases their output and income. In common with hundreds
of millions of other smallholder farmers worldwide, they have always
planted non-hybrid seeds and have never used any chemical fertilizer.
With a little training, better seeds, and a new spirit of community, a
modest experiment in rural Haiti is being offered up as one contribution to the larger global food challenge.
It is often claimed that smallholder farmers benefit from higher yields
when they switch to hybrid seeds. For the most part, those espousing
this view have never set foot on a small farm in a developing country.
If they knew and worked with smallholder farmers, they would understand that switching to hybrids that require new seeds to be purchased
each season represents a complete break with a centuries-old tradition
of seed saving, not to mention the added cost of purchasing fertilizer
and pesticides. Moreover, hybrids often require more water, adding to
the burden in most rural farming areas.
Industrial and smallholder farming represent polar opposites on
the agricultural spectrum. Industrial farming has had every imaginable kind of support over the years but, as the global food crisis in
2008 clearly demonstrated, it has serious handicaps that make it both
vulnerable and unable to adapt in periods of emergency. At that time,
the price of imported food had dramatically increased in many poor
countries. With no significant domestic food production to cushion
the blow, the result was widespread social and political unrest. Closer
examination of the underlying causes of the “Arab Spring” of 2011
make it clear that in places like Egypt and Yemen, the spike in food
prices was a significant contributing factor to those popular uprisings.
Rather than seeing industrial and smallholder farming as enemies, why
not change the game and view smallholder farmers as an under-utilized asset—thinking small could be the next big thing in agriculture.
Smallholder farmers could become the principle agent for a worldwide
experiment in developing sustainable and ecologically sound farming
practices that would compliment agribusiness, and at the same time
serve as a domestic buffer against spikes in imported food staples.
What better place to begin the experiment than in Haiti? Gustave and
Rosemary have already started.
Community building
The new spirit of community among the farmers in our program warrants a closer look.
Small-scale farmers in Haiti, as in many other parts of the world,
live from crop to crop. For the most part, they do not have bank
accounts or cash reserves. One misstep that leads to a lost crop, and
that family is at risk. There is much good will among the farmers,
who do help each other out, particularly at harvest time. But there is
still an innate caution that holds them back from new forms of collaboration. That is where our cooperative model enters the picture.
As we built up trust, the participating farmers felt more comfort-
Green Glory | 167
able contributing seed to a common bank, for example. The farmers’
committee was something completely new, but it soon earned the
respect and support of the entire community. Of course, the most
tangible benefit of this new method of collaboration was increased
income for the participating farmers.
The success of the overall agroforestry cooperative model is due to
its ownership by the farmers themselves, and the leaders from among
them who make up the farmers’ committee. And at the heart of that
committee is a new form of open consultation when dealing with issues
affecting the farmers. And not only farming issues, but any issue affecting the community can be discussed. All financial transactions are in
the open. Every member must treat the others with respect or face
censure by the group. When inevitable disputes arise, the members
must first reach a consensus on the best method for resolving the
matter. Another interesting procedure, previously unknown to me,
takes place when there are new people in a meeting: everyone present
will be asked to introduce the person next to them, rather than introducing themselves—a great way to get to know your colleagues.
I have sat in on some two dozen of these farmers’ committee meetings over the last two and a half years, and never once been asked
for money. I mention this because there is a prevalent misconception,
particularly among NGOs, that poor and illiterate Haitians cannot
be trusted to run programs. My experience is very different, having
watched this committee deal effectively with a wide range of issues over
the years. But it was cholera that provided the most poignant proof.
When cholera struck Haiti in late 2010, there was widespread panic
among the population because they had no idea how to deal with the
disease. People were dying agonizing deaths in front of their families,
in what seemed like only hours after contracting cholera. As the first
few deaths occurred within the extended farming community in which
our program is based, the entire population turned to the farmers’
committee for leadership. No one from any level of government—or
any NGOs for that matter—had come to the area to talk about the
outbreak. The farmers were entirely on their own.
I happened to be attending the farmers’ committee meeting when
this issue was initially raised, and their first request was not what you
might expect. The farmers asked if there was a way for them to be
trained so that they could help prevent cholera in the area. Within a
few days, fifteen of the farmers and nursery technicians had been given
a short training by Partners in Health, the exceptionally effective NGO
which, along with Doctors Without Borders, had taken the lead in
responding to the outbreak throughout the country.
Within a week of the meeting at which cholera prevention was discussed, I returned with a truckload of soap. Most farm households do
not have a toilet, and consequently they do not wash their hands after
a visit to the bushes. I realized it was not enough just to drop off the
soap, so we called the community together at the main nursery. With a
few hundred people watching, I conducted a demonstration of how to
wash your hands. We had a basin of water on a small table, and several
children helping with the demonstration. I turned it into a game of
counting the number of times we scrubbed our hands and washed up
past our wrists. I was struck by a vivid memory of my mother teaching me the same thing as a child, along with her admonition to always
wash up past your wrist.
All the nurseries in our program became involved in cholera prevention, running regular sessions for anyone from the community to come
and learn the basics of prevention, how to identify the symptoms, and
what to do if you contracted the disease. We brought in thousands of
bars of soap and liquid hand sanitizer, and these were distributed from
the various nurseries.
One afternoon, Wilson Noel, a technician in the main nursery,
received a call on his cell phone from someone who had just come
across a boy who lay dying on a road close to the nearby farming community of Morancy. Wilson jumped on a motorcycle and within a half
hour was back at the main nursery in Mapou with a barely conscious
fifteen-year-old boy named Florvil. When he had become violently ill
with cholera, Florvil’s family had not known what to do: they were
concerned that the whole family would die if they had any further
Green Glory | 169
contact with their son and so, having nowhere to turn to for help,
they abandoned the boy on a road to die. One can only imagine what
an agonizing decision that must have been for the parents. No one
approached Florvil as he lay on the road out of the same fear and lack
of knowledge that guided his family; luckily, one bystander knew to
call the cooperative. Once at the nursery, the farmers gave him the
basic oral rehydration mixture they had learned about from Partners in
Health, made with specific proportions of salt, sugar and water. This
stabilized him and Wilson then took him by motorcycle to a hospital
in Gonaïves. Within a week Florvil was completely restored to health,
back with his family, and attending school as usual.
For Haiti to undergo any real and lasting transformation as a nation,
a new sense of community must be built from the ground up. Our
program is making a contribution to this process by training farmers
in a fair and transparent collective decision-making process, which is
also nurturing natural local leadership. It started off as a way to manage
an agroforestry cooperative, but has already evolved into at least one
component of a new model for rural self-governance.
Sustainable business model
Few words are so widely used, but so misunderstood, as the term “sustainable.” It is bandied about everywhere with such abandon that it has
lost all meaning.
There are two applications of the word that pertain to my work in
Haiti. The first is sustainable agriculture, which I define as growing
food in a manner that does no harm to either the environment or biodiversity, and which contributes to a healthy rural economy.
The second application of sustainable is in connection with NGO
programs in general. Too often, in reality, the word is interchangeable
with “aid dependency.” I believe that a specific project or program in a
developing country can be deemed sustainable if it meets the following
test: is it still operating effectively three years after the original NGO has
stopped providing core funding and has ceased to oversee the day-to-day
operations of the program? This applies not only to NGOs, but also to
programs that receive funding and/or oversight provided by donor governments, the United Nations, or other international institutions.
A small confession: as smug as the above sustainability test may
sound, most of the past projects I have been involved in did not meet
this criteria. I am in debt to Timberland, and more specifically to Jeff
Swartz, for making me take a hard look at the true meaning of sustainability. His emphasis on striving for the maximum social impact with
the strategic use of minimal financial resources forced me out of the
comfortable NGO zone of thinking that, simply because you are doing
work to better humanity, the universe should supply an unlimited
amount of funding. I can hear NGOs objecting en masse, although
many know that this is true. And I am the first to acknowledge that,
in striving to deal with immediate needs in a country like Haiti, it is
not easy to incorporate an exit strategy that ensures your project will
continue and thrive without you.
The first thing I had to do was to frame our agroforestry program
differently in my mind. The traditional method would have been to
think about the desired impact and work back from there to figure
out what it would take to achieve this specific result, translate that
into a budget, raise the money, and implement the program. But I
now had a chance to step back and start with a clean slate. I realized
that our program would work better if we viewed it as a business
model, albeit a non-profit version. Go into a given community of
farmers with a model that combines growing trees and improving
food crop output, train them from day one to own and operate the
project, build in several diverse income streams, and then plan to walk
away after three years and have it be self-financing and self-managed
without direct involvement of the NGO. Thinking of the program in
this way meant that it was designed to transform a group of farmers
rather than simply direct them. Our goal was to create a farmerowned agroforestry cooperative model that could be implemented
anywhere in the country, with each cooperative—an economic unit
defined as people jointly operating an enterprise and sharing equally
in its benefits—becoming independent and self-financing after three
Green Glory | 171
years. As was mentioned earlier, the participating farmers in the pilot
program are now in the process of becoming their own legal cooperative, Alyans Ti Plantè-Gonaïves.
Stepping out of my NGO comfort zone, I have been actively
working with Timote over the past two years to create non-profit business elements within the framework of the cooperative. We had already
envisioned that participating farmers would volunteer to grow trees as
payment for an agricultural service to improve food crop yields and
bring them higher income. But the bigger question was how the overall
program would operate without external funding. This led us to create
a menu of seven options for every cooperative to utilize, depending on
what the farmers feel will work in their area, itemized in the following list. Each option has been conceived as one business element that
can generate income for the cooperative to allow it to cover the cost of
ongoing operations once we stop providing funds after three years:
Selling trees—Each cooperative is designed to generate an average
of one million trees a year. While most are for the farmers’ own use,
there are enough to be able to sell a portion. After two and a half
years of operation, the first cooperative in Gonaïves will begin offering 100,000 trees for sale in November, 2012. Based on what we
learned from this experience, the plan is to make this a permanent
feature of all future operations.
Seed bank surplus—The farmers in the Gonaïves pilot have, until
recently, given back the same amount of food crop seeds as they
received at the start of the growing season. We have begun to experiment with increasing the return policy to 15 percent above what
they received so that we begin to build up a surplus that can either
be sold by the community as seed to farmers in the area who are not
part of the program or, if the quality is not high enough, sold in the
market as grain. Either way, the income goes to the cooperative.
Marketing and sales—Still a work in progress, the idea is to sell
the farmers’ output in bulk in order to fetch a decent price—saving
them the task of having to sell it themselves in local markets or sell
their crops to an agent at a lower price. When they sell to an agent,
that individual resells the food and pockets the difference. Eventually the farmers can start planning their crops based on advance
agreements to purchase specific items. The plan, by the end of 2012,
is to be marketing a good portion of the output of our farmers, with
a small overhead on the sales going to the cooperative.
Microfinance—With a one-time investment of capital, combined
with the cost of training two people to manage the operation, we
plan to have a microfinance component in place by September, 2012.
Loans of between 2,000 and 30,000 Haitian gourdes (roughly from
US$50 to US$750) will be given for repayment in one to six months.
Loans will be limited to groups of five or six women who form a
lending circle, with the group assuming responsibility for ensuring
repayment. The money will be used by the women to finance purchases for their farms, as well as equipment that will allow them to
turn their crops into saleable products. We estimate that within four
months from the start of operation, this microfinance service will
become a modest profit generator for the cooperative.
Farmer field schools—We currently provide ongoing training
for the participating farmers. But our plan is to launch a 90-day
intensive training course, in segments over the course of a year
that correspond to down times in the agricultural cycle. Farmers
will earn a certificate and, in addition to learning basic farming
techniques, they will get instruction in basic financial literacy
and other life skills. Farmers already in the cooperative will pay a
modest amount for the school course, but we will be approaching
donors to underwrite scholarships for other farmers in the area.
Our hope is to make this a permanent program element, with
profits going directly to the cooperative.
Tree seed gathering—Training has begun in the art of tree seed
gathering. This is not just a matter of finding trees and picking off
the seeds, but of identifying “mother trees” and harvesting the seeds
at a precise time. By gathering our own seeds for our tree nurseries,
we are able both to save more on the seeds used for planting and to
generate further income by selling the surplus.
Green Glory | 173
Land reclamation—The most ambitious idea for generating
income, as yet untested, is to have the cooperative paid to reclaim
degraded land and turn it into productive farms using agroforestry
techniques. This plan needs more work before it can be implemented. However, the farmers of Haiti would seem to represent the
best resource to take on restoration of the denuded landscape. And
the most likely recipe for success is to use trees to turn that land into
productive farms that generate income. When trees have an immediate economic value, there is a reason for protecting them from the
dual ravaging forces of charcoal gatherers and wandering livestock.
As each cooperative within the program becomes independent and
self-financing after three years, they become part of a network of cooperatives with a financial link to the parent organization, drawing once
again on the Timberland play book. The Smallholder Farmers Alliance
will sell them tree and crop seeds, although each cooperative will always
be free to find the best deal if we are not competitive. We will help the
various cooperatives to work together to market their trees and food
crops, leading to savings of scale. We will also cover the salaries of three
agronomists for each cooperative on an ongoing basis, ensuring that
there is good technical input and as a way to monitor that the cooperatives continue to function effectively and meet a strict code of conduct.
In addition to full transparency and the following of democratic principles, central to that code of conduct is keeping out of politics. We are
keenly aware that with the success of the program comes the temptation for it to become politicized, particularly as it is based on blocks of
2,000 well organized farmers managing each cooperative.
In 2013 we plan to have completed the basic guidelines for replicating the Smallholder Farmers Alliance model. The plan is to create as
many cooperatives as we can throughout the country. But we will also
be making the details available as open-source development technology.
While they will need to come up with their own name and secure their
own funding, anyone will be able to take the model and implement it.
We will provide some technical assistance if requested, but our hope is
that this agroforestry model will start popping up around the country.
Two-part harmony
The experience of working with smallholder farmers in Haiti has taken
shape as a vision in two parts.
First, that an agroforestry revolution spreads throughout the country
as a grassroots movement far beyond the scope of any one NGO. In
the process, I think we can show the potential for smallholder farmers
to go from being marginalized to leading the way in sustainable food
production. We began in 2010 in Gonaïves, and will soon have more
cooperatives established in other parts of the country. Hopefully,
within a few years, we will have created a network of cooperatives, as
other organizations begin applying the open-source technology that
we will soon be making available.
The second part of the vision has to do with the “Haiti experiment”:
the proposal outlined in Chapter 5 for Haiti to become the site for a
10-year, country-wide research study in how to significantly improve
the use of development aid. Agriculture is one vital component of this
larger research, and I am suggesting that the smallholder farmers in
Haiti could engage in this experiment on behalf of smallholder farmers
the world over. According to census data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there are around 525 million farms in the
world. Together they provide a livelihood for about 40 percent of the
global population. Nearly 90 percent of these are small farms, defined
as having less than two hectares of land, and occupying roughly 60
percent of arable land worldwide. Humanity faces a massive global
food crisis unless production rises significantly in the next decades, and
smallholder farmers are central to meeting that challenge. They need to
be enlisted, and their counterparts in Haiti are a great place to start.
| 201
About the Author
HUGH LOCKE was born in Canada in 1954. He began his professional career directing a nation-wide tree planting program for Katimavik, Canada’s national youth service organization, and establishing
a foundation and archives related to the work of forester Richard St.
Barbe Baker (1889–1982). He went on to spend 20 years in the field
of development, working with a wide range of governments, non-governmental organizations, corporations, and United Nations agencies
on social, environmental, and economic programs which contributed
to the common good. In 2005, he co-founded Yéle Haiti with musicians Wyclef Jean and Jerry Duplessis, and together they provided
emergency relief, employment, education, and environmental services
to the people of Haiti. Hugh stepped down as president in early 2011
to launch the Haitian-based Smallholder Farmers Alliance, of which
he is co-founder and President. He currently advises and serves on the
boards of a number of Haitian NGOs. He lives with his wife in New
York state and commutes to Haiti.
THE HAITI EXPERIMENT is Hugh
Locke’s fascinating and heartwarming
account of his efforts to help the people
of this impoverished nation. His principal
companion on this journey is hiphop musician Wyclef Jean. Together
they endure triumph, heartbreak, and
ultimately trial-by-media for their
labors as co-founders of the charitable
organization Yéle Haiti. Locke traces
the roots of Haiti’s loss of economic
power to key events in its history,
and offers a revealing and irreverent
portrait of the inner workings of global
agribusiness and foreign aid. Locke had
been accustomed to working with heads
of state and royalty, but in Haiti, he
negotiates with gangsters in the slums
of Port-au-Prince, works with survivors
of the tragic 2010 earthquake, and,
ultimately, finds inspiration among the
country’s farmers for a new approach
to humanitarian assistance. Locke
concludes with a bold proposal to make
Haiti the site of a 10-year experiment
aimed at restoring, reforesting and
rebuilding the country while pioneering
an innovative model for helping the
people of the developing world to take
charge of their own destiny.
HAwKEYE
Pu b L IsH ER s
A brave, clear-eyed, and ultimately hopeful
account of working in—and with—Haiti. Locke
offers a striking analysis and critique of the current structure of aid to the country, and draws
on the lessons he has learned to offer a charter
for a new approach. Anyone who has wondered
“Where has all the money gone?” should read
this book, which shows us why reconstruction
can only succeed if we change the way we think
about what ‘development’ truly means
LAURENT DUbOIs
author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History.
”
Hugh Locke delivers a chronicle of Haiti from
its inception to the current state of disrepair.
He helps readers see a different way of helping
Haiti—one that is not focused on philanthropy,
but on growing the hearts and minds and capabilities of the Haitian people
JEff swARTz
former President and CEO, Timberland
”
Armchair experts on Haiti have generated
countless pages about the country that gained
notoriety with the devastating January 2010
earthquake. but Hugh Locke draws on his
hands-on experience and intimate relationship with Haiti and its people to go far beyond
“the-poorest-country-in-the-Western-Hemisphere” type of statistics. He presents a sensitive narrative that takes us from Haiti’s origins
through to the present, and points the way for
it to again become “The Pearl of the Antilles”, if
not the richest Caribbean island nation it once
was. A must read for anyone concerned with
Haiti and its future.
”
RAYMOND ALCIDE JOsEPH
former Haitian Ambassador to the United States

THE HAITI EXPERIMENT THE HAITI EXPERIMENT

Transcription

Similar documents

wlfm-postcard starburst - Westland

Horticulture Innovation Lab Regional Center at Zamorano in Honduras

CONGOLESE WORLD AFRO POP SOUL music

FATHER JOSEPH - APF-USA

Jolly Jumper Moses Basket with Stand

The Barn

The HighGrow Agri Model

Konpasyon ak Kouraj 2013 Update

Présentation PowerPoint